A February 25 news report from WSBT-TV News on Fox out of South Bend, IN, reported on a Berrien County, Michigan Health Department warning about 7-hydroxymitragyinine (7-OH), failing to make the distinction between 7-OH and kratom. Berrien County lies directly to the north of South Bend on the Indiana border.
“The Berrien County Health Department is issuing a warning about a highly addictive drug, sometimes known as ‘gas station heroin’,” read the report. “This comes as Michigan lawmakers consider introducing a bill that would penalize anyone who grows or sells the drug called Kratom, or 7OH.”
The report interviewed what it presented to be “a former Kratom user who wishes to remain anonymous” who called kratom “an insidious, nasty, nasty thing.” The report did not interview any kratom consumer who considered the plant beneficial.
“This comes as Michigan lawmakers consider introducing a bill that would penalize anyone who grows or sells the drug called Kratom, or 7OH.”
-WSBT-TV
Images of plain leaf kratom products, but not highly concentrated extracts or 7-OH products, appeared in the video and webpage of the report.
The health department’s warning WBST was supposedly reporting on was in regards to 7-OH, not kratom. It did not refer to kratom as “gas station heroin” or as being synonymous with “7-OH”.
However, the warning itself contains misleading language. The warning stated “Community members may not know 7-OH is in kratom”, and “7-OH occurs naturally in trace amounts in the kratom plant, but some products contain it in significantly higher concentrations.” However it did not make a clear distinction that 7-OH products are not kratom, and that plain leaf powder kratom consists of only dried leaves of the plant that contain the “trace amounts” of 7-OH.
Kratom contains over 50 alkaloids that have been identified. 7-OH is a metabolite of kratom’s most abundant alkaloid, mitragynine. Isolated alkaloids work very differently from multiple alkaloids working together. 7-OH products are manufactured by oxidizing mitragynine.
7-OH vendors often use the word “kratom” on their packaging, which has led to some of the confusion.
Multiple news outlets have made similar mistakes, failing to understand basic definitions. Even the term “gas station heroin” was previously used to describe tianeptine, not kratom, until news media confused the terms.
In its 2025 announcement that it was seeking to make 7-OH a Schedule 1 drug, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it a point to distinguish kratom from 7-OH. However, this did not prevent a wave of state and local legislation that banned plain leaf kratom along with 7-OH, as in Louisiana and Connecticut.